SYNOPSIS. John Valiant, a rich soclety favorites, suddenly discovers that the Vallant cor- poration, which his father founded and which was the principal source of his wealth, has failed, He voluntarily turns wver his private fortune to the receiver for the corporation CHAPTER !ll.—Continued. To be outside! All that light and color and comfort and pleasure would hum and sparkle on just the sande, though he was no longer within the circle of its effulgence-—slaving per- for no experience, to pay for a meal in some second-rate restaurant and a pallet in some shabby-genteel, hall bedroom, till his clothes were replaced by ill-fitting “hand-me-downs'’—till by wretched gradations he arrived finally at the status of the dime seat in the gallery and five-cent cigars! There was one way back It through the hackneyed gateway marriage. lay of fair exchange for “Cutlet for cutlet™- ran through his mind. Why not? Others did so. And as for himself, {t wealth any and spinstered millions—there was Katharine Fargo! women alike distinguish, that Katharine Fargo loved first and fore most her own wonderful person, he had been an easy second in gard, John Valiant looked down at bulldog squatted on the floor, his eyes shining in the dimness. A little hot ripple had run over him “Not your life, Chum!” he said less barter! There things besides money tion In this doddering all! We're goi for ourselves, if only bages! And we gol without any baby-achi never held noses our castor-oil!” It was folded down, page. Finis had been rose-colored chapter, told himself, he new rugged something that slowly dawning within him courage, even of hatred of the ¥ wrenched him or a momant. He turned from the ow, picked up his letters, and followed by the dog. went slowly up another flight to his room. » * N - * » . . must be other and social pos! old world, af begin something raising cab- to stand it the nurse took Zz to it's re our when we that old written to the was consci had us of a been and a self-pity zest that even for v t wind He tore open the letters abstracted. ly: the usual card two, a taflor's spring announcement chronle serial exc marble-quarrying company, a quarterly gtatement of a club house-committee The last two script look. One was small a legal firm in its cor was largish, stout Manila paper, one side, a gaudy age stamps proclaiming that been registered “What's in that, I wonder?” to himself, and dinner or from an missives bore a nonde- Ww ith lent and and Procession corpu bore, of pos: it he sald then, For a Long Time John Vallant Sat Motionless, the Opened Letter In His Hand, Staring at Nothing. the unmasculine speculation, opened the smaller envelope. “Dear 8ir,” began the letter, {n the most uncompromisingly conventional of typewriting: “Dear Sir: “Enclosed pleases find, with title deed, a memorandum opened in your name by the late John Valiant some years before his death. It was his desire that the services indicated in connection with this estate should con- tinue till this date. We hand you herewith our check for $236.20 (two hundred and thirty-six dollars and twenty cents), the balance in your fa- vor, for which please send receipt, “And oblige, “Yours very truly, “Emerson and Ball” “(Enclosure) He turned to the memorandum. It showed a sizable initial deposit against which was entered a series of annual tax payments with minor disburse | ments credited to “inspection and! care.” The tax receipts were pinned to the account, The larger wrapper contained an un sealed envelope, across which was written in faded ink and in an unfa- miliar dashing, slanting handwriting, | his own name. The envelope con- tained a creased yellow parchment, from between whose folds there | clumped and fluttered down upon the floor a long flattish object wrapped | in a paper, a newspaper clipping and a letter Puzzled in he unfolded the crackling his hands. “Why,” he said | -it's a deed made over | to me.” He overran it swiftly. “Part of an old Colony grant * * * 4 plantation in Virginia, twelve hun- of a vice-regal governor in the six teenth century. 1 had no idea titles | in the United States went back so far | as that!" His fled to the end. | “It was my father's! What could he have wanted of an estate in Virginia? | It must have come into his hands in | the course of business.” He picked up the newspaper clip- | ping. It was worn and broken in the | folds as if it had been carried for | months in a pocketbook “It will interest readers of this sec- tion of Virginia (the paragraph be gan) to learn, from a recent transfer received for record at the County | Clerk's office, that Damory Court has | eye He turned the paper over and found | of the trapsfer to himself, when he | the year his father | had died John Valiant, the former owner “There are few minor, the son of | indeed who do not | the tragedy which in the | yublic mind the is connected moreover, that this old home stead has been left in its present state | (for, as is well known, the house has | remained with all its contents and fur nisl 10 rest recall with estate ‘he fact, hings untouched) during so | not, of course, fall to be commented on, and this circumstance alone has perhaps tended to keep alive a melan choly story which may well be for gotten He read the elaborate, rather stilted | per old 5 8 Tra uame with a wondering interest he mused, Probably he couldn maybe nobody would would explain house, “with a t sell and ever live in why It ~why there | Probably the land was starved and run down it's an off the hall-bedroom he sald to himself holds out an escape army of rent-payers twenty-eight hundred is | live down there a landed and by mark an the cab Chum? How does re are records of rentals no set 10 rate,” humorously “it from When my the noble cry g I couid proprietor, ue the same hon and ralse rary colonel ' bages | was talking about—eh, while you stalk rabbits strike you He laughed Valiant, of u*™ whimsically, He. John York, first-nighter at | its theaters, hailfellow-well-met In its | club corridors and diner at | any of a brilliant glass verdwinkling supper tables, en on the wreck a Virginia | plantation, a would-be country gentle | man, on an and next to New welcome one hundred te ¢ oO automobile He of bethought and himself the possessed himself it It lay with the superscrip side down. On it was written, in the same hand which had addressed the other envelope: fallen ct For ny son, John Valiant, When he reaches the age of twenty. five. That, then, had been written by his father—and he had died nearly twenty | years ago! He broke the seal with a | strange feeling as if, walking in some | familiar thoroughfare, he had stum- bled on a lichened an® sunken tomb stous “When you read this, my son, you | will have come to mans estate, It is | curious to think that tais black, black ink may be faded to gray and this | white, white paper yellowed, just from lying waiting so long. But strangest of all is to think that you yourself! whose brown head hardly tops this | desk, will be as tall (I hope) as 1! How 1 wonder what you will look like then! And shall I--the real, real I, 1 mean-—be peering over your strong broad shoulder as you read? Who knows? Wise men have dreamed such a thing possible-~and | am not a bit wise. “John, you will not have forgotten that you are a Vallant, But you are also a Virginian. Will you have dis- covered this for yourself? Here is the deed to the land where | and my father, and his father, and minny, many more Valiants before them were born. Sometime, perhaps, you will know why you are John Valiant of New York In stead of John Valiant of Damory Court, 1 can not tell you myself, be cause it 1s too true a story, and I have forgotten how to tell any but fairy tales, where everything happens right, Pe a a Tiley the usutifel an happ to- ily “You may never care to live at Damory Court, Maybe the life you | will know so well by the time you | read this will have welded you to it | If 80, well and good. Then leave the old place to your son, But there is such a thing as racial habit, and the call of blood And 1 know there is a thing, too, as fate carries his fate on =a band about his neck; so the Moslem put It It was my fate to go away, and I know now--since dis tance Is not made by miles alone— that I myself shall never see Damory again, But life is a strange ri | And It may be your fate to | back and rising, went to a! trunk that lay against the wall Searching In a portfolio, he took out a small old-fashioned photograph, i much battered and soiled. It had been cut from a larger group and the name of the photographer had been erased from the back. He set it upright on the desk, and bending forward, looked long at the face {t disclosed. It was the only picture he had ever possessed of his father He turned and looked into the glass above the dresser. The features were the same, eyes, brow, lips, and strong waving hair But for its time-stains the photograph might have been of himself, taken yesterday, ouo CHAPTER V. On the Red Road The green, mid-May afternoon arched as tiles Heaven and steeped Virginian a sky as Temple of a wash of sun Nothing in all WAS with the of the fn in gpringy landscape but looked warm and opalescent and inviting-—ex cept a tawny bull that from across a barred fencecorner switched a true in slilence and glowered sul the big motor motion- at the f the twisting road Curled worm-like in the driver's seat with his chin knees, John Valiant distance through color with in his clover that 1 lent tall 3 CULL al at halted side © Mis on nis his upon the aour mdrous sat with For that w eyes an he had whirred F shimmer <¢ fiip loitering breeze & Dippant I face, aweetl from the crimsor poured and ro« side Chum, old man,” about the She Was the First to Recover. Did Look 80 Funny!” “You old with me he bear's ding jot on the white gkin rug-—never again A “‘Wishing-House! Where are you? And this old ASW eT Here | am, Master; hero I am!’ “Ah, we are only children, after all. our plays i had but O John, The Are the deed will parchment have Toho! all many toys, t a most Never-Never Land CHAPTER IV. A Valiant of Virginia, For a long time John Vallant motionless, the opened letter in hand, stariag at nothing. He had sensation, spiritually, of a traveler awakened with a ru amid wholly unfamiliar surr He was trying to two and two together shock undings remember--to put His father had beer he had t n Southern-born, that “Eg whatever yes But he had known noth f his father's eariy days, been such o or of his forebears; since he had old enough to things had questions of Phrases re 3 BOOU BO Ole » nde wonager ¢ t had to ask ho of the letter ran through perhaps, you will know why you are John Valiant of York instead of John Valiant of Damory Court * * * |] cannot Ii you myself.” There was some ragedy had blighted the place, some “melancholy story,” as the sUpping put it Hoe bent over deed spread out upon the table, following with his fin ger the long line of transfers dy john Valyante,, ” he muttered; “what odd spelling! ‘Robert Valyant'—with- out the ‘ec’ Here, In 1730, the 'y’ be There was something strenuous and appealing in the long line of dates. “Valiant. Always a Va liant. How they held on to It! There's never a break A curious pride, new-born and self conscious, was dawning in him. He was descended from ancestors who had been no weaklings. A Valiant had settled on those acres under a royal governor, before the old frontier | fighting was over and the Indians Sometime, mind Hana Now that then, the The sons of those who had braved | savages had bowed thelr to raze the forests and turn the | primeval jungles into golden planta | tions There stole Into his mood an eery | suggestion of intention. Why should | the date assigned for that deeds de livery have been the very day on which he had elected poverty? Here "as a foreordination as pointed as the indéx-finger of a gulde-post. * ‘Every man carries his fate,” he repeated, “ ‘on a riband about his neck.’ Chum, do you believe In fate?” For answer the bulldog, cocking an alert eye on his master, discontinued his occupation—a conscientious if un. successful mastication of the flattish packet that had fallen from the folded deed-—-and with much solicitous tall wagging, brought the sodden thing In his mouth and put it into the out stretched hand, His master unrolled the pulpy wad and extricated the object it had en. closed-+an old-fashionad fron door-key. » . . * * . + . After a time Valliant thrust the kay sre used to, " og r fingers on't you tie beggar ing eaten!” Heo filled ant wheeze * topped dead With a sigh Jacket, donned a his toolbox wrist-watlch three © was clock uster's hood and went At half past three the had got far as o'clock the bull up and gone nosing half past four John Valiant his back, like some disreputable stevadore alternately tinkering ith and cursing the mechanism A sharp stone frenziedly into the small of his and just as he made a final vicious lunge, something gave way and a prickling red-hot stab of pain shot zig gagging from his smitten crazy-bone investigation At it the lubricator dog had given afield At iay flat on an w refractory obdurate gnawed his back valves REGIMENTAL COLORS IN PAWN | Odd Experiences of British Emblems | Once Greatly Prized by Those Who Carried Them. of the old 50th regiment in the garden of Funtington house, near, Chichester, is a reminder of the strange fates that fous military emblems, London Tit Bits remarks. The colors of the Sist foot—since disbanded-—were captured by American pirates during the war of independence and hidden away In Ireland; the colors of the 20th regl ment were deliberately burnt prior to the surrender at Saratoga to prevent their capture by the enemy. At Bergen-op-Zoom the Royal Scots, to save their precious ¢olors from fall ing into French hands, sank them deep In the river, though the enemy later fished them out; and when the second battalion of the 8th foot was disbanded at Portsmouth in 1816 the colors were cut into small pleces and distributed among the officers. One of the volors of the 1st North: amptonshire regiment, which had been carried right through the peninsular campaign, was discovered some years ago in a pawn broker's shop, though how it got there Is a mystery to this through every tortured crevice of his impatient frame, like steel from flint it struck out a crisp oath that brought an answering bovine snort from the fence-corner Worming like a lizard to freedom, his eyes puckered shut with wretched pang, John Valliant sat up and shook his grimy fist the air You silly loafing cried “Thump your own crazy-bone and see how you like it! You-—oh, lord!” His arm dropped, and a flush spread his face the brow, For his eyes had opened He was gesturing at bull but at a girl, who fronted him beside the road, haughti- ness in the very hue of her blue walking sult and, clear the in idiot!” he over to not the gray in the felt cavalry that held shment myrile-blue eyes fn smolder of mingled aston and indignation. An instant he all tig gazed the muscles of his face htened with chagrin hs stam 1 really girl had been ing from the face to the ence-corner he startled f her feat ures warred with trys mi i » wr th gency 0 mirth iney-sweep gaid, {ous the and 3 ang oo + § gu nt MONE Aral escen monster--at t ped on tha 5 redo Pt he carr ra oriman looked back mo he al Nl Bed he ways fol she tone The percept sald in small, fness I'm not in t of dogs And with a | she swung briskly on up the Red Road lohn Valiant yet of alo he least afraid ttle nod stood staring after her around uttered : till she had passed from view a urve Oh glory 1* he To begin by shaking your fist at her and end by making her wonder if you ing You poor, profane, floundering doit!” (1 BE CONTINUKETD m aren't try to be fresh! { 8 day A similar uncertainty attaches der regiment, which were recovered from a London pawn broker, who was offering them for sale, by Lord Archi bald Campbell in 1888 Four years later four colors which had accompanied the Gloucester regi ment in Egypt and in the peninsula were recovered from a York pawn broker. It appeared that, having been regiment to his son, they were ulti mately secured by a servant, who, fall ing on evil times, pawned them for a few shillings. Wood Is Made Fireproof. way has fireproofed all its rolling stock without the elimination of woodwork and the structural and dec orative advantages which woodwork affords. The method of fireproofing is the same as that now being employed by the admiralty. This consists of the impregnation of the pores and fi. bers of the wood with chemicals stich as render the wood absolutely flame proof. Wood so treated is sald to lose none of its natural characteristios, and has no harmful effect upon glues, nails, varnishes or metal fittings with which it may be brought into contact. ~ Railway Times, London, ATTORNEYS, ATTORNEY APLAW nL srerTh 9H Can Doris of Ower Bones I 2 TE DE SRS ¥. BARRISON WALFER ATTORNEY -ATRAW PRLEFOETR 0B Po BV. High Sweet A rans vette prety dimabed ty ATTORNEYS ATIAY ATTORNEY AT LAW BELLEFONTRY Prastices ta all the eeurts OCensultation English and German. Ofios, Orider: Exshang Bullding wh hd PAlLR ATTORNEY -ATLAW BELLERFONTA ORs BW, corner Diamond, twe doom Plent Wational Bank, Penns Valley Banking Company Centre Hall, Pa. DAVID K. KELLER, Cashier Receives Deposits . . . @ Discounts Notes . , ssn 80 YEAR® EXPERIENCE Traore Mang Desians CorvmiouTs &a Anyone sen ing s sheteh and dencriplion gaickly asoerigin our opinion free wielher invention is probably patentable Com tions strictly conSdential. Handbook on P sent free, Oldest ency for seourt Patents taken through Mans & special netics, without . Scientific American. A bandsomely flim tod weekly. Jaren go suiation of any selepiife journal i: Tour Broth. SL Bod by all mew Co 36 1Brendwn, ew Y ron A FS Waghireugn 0 p MUNN & Phare ooby 1 19 turns dition Menoy tisth CR to the face of the . te Lean em Fiegr Mortgage Office is Crider’s Stone Budiding BELLEFONTE, PA. H. 0. STROHNEIER, Manufaoturer,ef and Dealer in HIGH GRADE ... MONUMENTAL Womr! in all kinds of a if cn cor Bt. w— o ae OLD PORT HOTEL i ROYER ne her bed ETERS DR. SOL. M. NISSLEY, VETERINARY SURGEON, st Palpos A greduate of the of Pe Sutte, Ble a. Both : wim i
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers